“Me very sorry. Ram forget,” said the man contritely.
But his repentance had no effect on the thoroughly angry engineer. He told the man that he was too grossly careless to work on the dynamite gang and ordered him to report at his office that night and be assigned to some other work.
Tubby nodded sagely as he heard this. He was confirmed, it seemed, in his opinion that the man had been careless and he felt like telling the engineer so. But Rob asked a question.
“You haven’t told us yet just what it was that happened?” he said.
“Yes, what was it?” put in Fred.
“Oh, nothing to speak of but an explosion of fifteen pounds of dynamite about as close to us as I’d care to have such a thing happen,” said the engineer grimly.
“Gee whiz! As bad as that!” exclaimed Merritt looking aghast. “Why we might all have been——”
“Hoisted sky-high. Oh, you don’t need to tell me that. That careless fellow Ram left one of his cans of dynamite lying on the ground not far from the test hole. I didn’t notice it and he didn’t either, I guess, till he shot the well. Then just as that column of stones and stuff was sky-hooting up, I happened to see that can lying there. It gave me a turn, I tell you. I figured out what would happen if a rock ever hit and we standing where we were.”
“What would have happened?” asked Tubby innocently, his eyes like two saucers.
“Happened! Why we’d all have had through tickets to Kingdom Come, that’s what would have happened.”